I am finally back in Brasil after having spent some time in Barcelona for my girl's birthday. Now for the jealousy of my friends in England, I can tell that the weather here in Porto Alegre is just sweet, at around 25 degrees Celsius without a cloud in the sky. Now my work is hopefully going to take off while I am here in this wonderful weather.
Following the recommendation of the guy from Zero Punctuation, I have been reading this comic strip called XKCD. The strip is not incredibly awesome, and some may claim I do not understand the jokes, hence my veredict. That may well be. But I have to admit it, it has its moments of brilliance. This week's strip, however, is about a common mishap faced by computer geeks all around, in particular the example of BSD installations. When I was younger and with a lot more time in my hands (due to my still living in my parent's place), I used to like to play around with Linux and BSD installations, doing it like it was done when men were men and wrote their own drivers. It is all fun if you like to tweak with things and know all the lines necessary in the files at /etc that make your system work. It is a lot less fun when you just want your Internet connection to work or your personal SVN server be up and available. Hence, over time, I may have gotten weak, and now I rely on graphical Linux installations and automatic updates. What the hell, sometimes I just want things to work, not to prove my geek manhood.
Yesterday I picked up my new camera, a birthday gift from my brother, after a perilous trek to the confines of south London, as seen below. Adventures apart, I am now discovering the awesome new features of my Panasonic DMC-TZ3, though most of the non-obvious ones are probably going to be used just for the first month in which I play around with the camera. In any case, this one has a much larger resolution than my previous Canon Powershot A80 (with which most of my previous pictures were taken), and significantly better optics, with more than three times the optical zoom capacity. It also takes wide angled pictures, like the one shown in this post. Later I took some time to go out to Ruskin Park to take more pictures, the weather at least was nice (for London, that is).
An interesting video about a parallel organization trying to reach space in the 50s and 60s. The best part of this video, without a doubt is the description by Blackstronaut Wallace "Suitcase" Jefferson of how he got laid the very night he started up NASSA.
I am blogging this with a week of delay, since it took me some time to figure out interesting (or not thoroughly idiotic) captions for my Picasa Web Album. Nevertheless, on the week of one of the most important days for the history of mankind, I decided to celebrate the event by visiting Paris with my girl. Unlike my previous visits, this one allowed me to visit the Palace of Versailles. Up until this point I never thought it would be such a great experience, after all, how big can a palace be? But I must tell that this one gives an interesting meaning to the term majestic. This picture, though in very poor lighting, is just a part of the Hall of Mirrors, which is a huge room with an awesome view to the huge gardens (a fraction of the original gardens) outside.
All in all, a very pleasant experience, and I have seen but a fraction of the entire palace grounds.
While reading the latest review from Yahtzee in the Escapist Magazine, or more exactly, the forums linked to his reviews, I came across a link to a company that was just awesome in the innuendo included in their name. Of course one can never be sure if this subtle interpretation is accidental or not (or if I have a sick mind and see things where they are not), but the company name is, nominally, Massive Black, while a black (actually gray) Rooster sits at the back. Regardless, I leave to the reader to know which synonym of Rooster is implied to be big and black on the company logo.
You never know when things in weird languages pop up into your mail box, and today a Kazakh friend sent me links to some interesting videos in YouTube which not only show some interesting drawing tricks, but also have songs in some weird language. Now I know that I have been posting videos from YouTube all too often, but I have not seen many interesting things outside of the video realm. Anyway, you could count the previous post as a music one, regardless of the YouTube trailer.
If you happen to understand Portuguese (more precisely Carioquese), you will notice that the lyrics sort of (loosely) match the innuendos of the drawing.
My girlfriend has just given me the soundtrack of the documentary Trinity and Beyond, after what seemed to be a remarkably hard time trying to find this in stores this side of the Atlantic. My girlfriend's quest to satisfy my eclectic musical taste, however, is not the point of this post, the music itself is. If anyone has watched this documentary, or any other of the atomic series made by Visual Concept Entertainment, it is hard not to be impressed with the choice of music that accompanies the detonation of nuclear explosives.
I initially thought that the music was cleverly selected from some classical composer, and the synchronization of the musical apexes with the blasts carefully made. However, after looking at their website, it turns out that the music was especially composed for these films, and performed by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, in what turns out to be an entirely fitting combination, given the history of nuclear armaments being strongly tied to both the US and Russia. Historical digressions aside, this music is quite powerful on its own, and even more so if you read track titles such as Thor Missiles and Operation Crossroads. Besides, this music is excellent to work to, so I should experience some productivity gains (offset by this blog posting). You can also check out trailer for this movie below.
One of the best movie lines ever, can be repeated in almost any real-world situation, either metaphorically, or literally, if you are in one of those situations that absolutely require an axe-based solution!
My female friends ever since school always told me I should talk less about sex, and that when I grew up and mature, I would stop making sexual jokes. So either I have not grown up, or they were wrong (or something in between). The pythons, illustrate my point, I guess, since they have been doing sexual and profanity-based jokes for quite a long time. This one from some time ago:
And quite recently, the same sexual joke:
QED, my behavior is perfectly normal, and I can be confident that I am a mature adult. Either way, the song is quite catchy, and it goes like this Sit on my face and tell me that you love me I'll sit on your face and tell you I love you too I love to hear you oralize When I'm between your thighs You blow me away.
Sit on my face and let my lips embrace you I'll sit on your face and then I'll love you truly Life can be fine if we both sixty nine If we sit on our faces In all sorts of places And play till we're blown away.
After having spent the previous two weeks in what I call total stress mode, writing to meet the deadline for AAMAS, I needed to cope with the burnout caused by such an intense push. I guess it's hard not to experience this in my line of work, because no one can really choose the moment of scientific insights. In any case, my movie-based recovery technique involved watching Kevin Smith's movies throughout the weekend. Of course, the highlight goes to Clerks, especially the first one, which has some amazing debates over the fate of the contractors working on the second Death Star. Besides that debate, one thing missing from the movie is what happened during the funeral of one of the protagonist's high school friend, later shown in the cartoon below:
This weekend I have been introduced to old Soviet Cartoons, which sort of gave me an insight of how it is easier to find commonalities between children than it is among grownups. The reason for this is that the person who showed me the cartoons grew up in Soviet Kazakhstan, and the activities of children in front of a TV seemed to be quite similar regardless of the political background. Of course, I always had an idea of communist countries as trying to force some sort of automaton behavior upon their citizens. Regardless of what the ruling class tries to do, however, people are usually trying to have fun somehow. Anyway, I digress, check out this interesting child cartoon, Russian is not really required to understand this one:
Also, this outrageous cartoon (no talking) is quite something:
I am really starting to enjoy watching these reviews from this Yahtzee guy. I had all but dismissed the escapist magazine a while back because I felt that it had become quite boring and repetitive after it ceased being an online magazine to be more like a fake indie GameSpot wannabe. Now at least, I have a reason to visit that part (and only that part) of their website every Wednesday. By the way, it pays to check Yahtzee's website games section, particularly if you are nostalgic about adventure game and have not yet taken a look at the new Sam and Max games. Final addition, the name Gareth Gobulcoque is just awesome, I bet you will find dozens of them in MMORPG...
Although I am definitely a partial person regarding Germany (I love the country), I think everybody should finally admit that the land of freedom is not (and probably has never been) the United States of America. Right now, my main candidate for the land of freedom is Germany. Take for example its television regulations, this TV show from a channel called Neun Live, it airs in open television! The channel itself consists of game shows, but this particular one is hosted by a German lady that talks to the public oblivious to the fact that she is wearing just skimpy panties, meanwhile, the background focuses on her breasts. In one particular moment she complains to the viewers that she is too dumb to solve the puzzle, so they need to call the show. Absolutely hilarious! But there's more, apparently, the only rule of networked television in Germany is that you cannot show an erection before 8PM, now that is a liberal society.
Leipzig, it seems, is full of statues of naked people, at least its university is, and the view from the tram stop in front of the Sportsforum, near the place where I am attending CEEMAS, is particularly disturbing. You can check it out on the picture of this post, which, besides the title of this post, needs no further explanation.
And speaking of Leipzig, it seems I did not mess up my presentation, so now I am officially relaxed, hurray!
Right now, I am getting ready to present my paper in the CEEMAS conference, and my stress levels are a bit high, so I am posting to try and chill out a bit. In particular, I will be making fun of German iconography, which by the way I find extremely creative, and slightly funny. Digressions apart, it seems to me that the famous Teutonic fondness for canines also leaves its mark on the train fares. As you can see from this picture, taken in the train station at the Leipzig/Halle airport, children and dogs share the same class of ticket in a train. So, which one you would rather take with you? Your dog, or your kid?
After having finished watching the third season of Battlestar Galactica I followed the recommendation of a friend and watched the first episode of the series Dexter. This series follows our hero Dexter, serial killer extraordinaire. That's right, the hero, or anti-hero if you will, kills people for enjoyment, but in this particular case, the man has a code of conduct, in which he only kills people that have committed heinous crimes and walked. I am not going to start a debate about the ethics of this, because clearly it is something allowed in the American ethos, where the death penalty is applied in many states. In any case, I found the show quite interesting, and disturbingly funny. It is pretty hard to try and describe the key moments in this show without sounding psychopathic, at least to people who have not seen the previous episodes. Having been an outsider of sorts myself, at least towards the rest of most humans, I can understand some of the doubts going on the mind of this character, and his quest of understanding normal people is also very funny. To finish it off, I leave a video of the opening credits, which I think is one of the highlights of the show, the close ups of regular breakfast activities feeling almost dangerous and disturbing.
And a final and disturbing confession, after watching the fourth episode of this series, I felt like cutting meat! And went right to the kitchen help my Kazakh friend prepare tonight's ethnic meal!
The period of inactivity in this blog indicates that I have been busy in the last bunch of weeks, aside from the usual PhD crunch which, despite what PhD Comics might say, does exist, I have been changing flatmates over the beginning of the month, and travelling to conferences, which is quite a draining, yet rewarding, activity. As soon as I get new stuff to comment on, I will make sure this blog gets updated with more interesting material than my rants.
Today I exaggerated in coffee, at least for my standards, and got the jittery effect, which in turn reminded me of this episode of Futurama! Unfortunately, I did not make it to the 100th cup of coffee, so no time freeze action. But I got close to it (I hope).
Now it is official, Futurama is coming back! Unfortunately, nobody released this video on a better format on the internet, so you will have to bear with me and watch this outrageously funny bootleg, while we wait for media to come out in an official channel. I am already following the hype and getting useless stuff from fansites!
Once again, nothing beats Japanese TV! Whatever shockability comedy we westerners can come up with, we will always be bound by our Judeo-Christian half wit morality, and hence limited in comedic renovation. The Japanese, however, do not seem to have qualms about naked people or small time sexual insinuation, which makes for some awesome giggles, and for the young and excitable, mild hard ons.
I have recently been amazed with a British company that manufactures 1/6 scale models of military hardware for enthusiasts. The reason for this is that these are no ordinary Revell plastic kits, no Sire. What amazed me is that the guys at Armortek make fully functional metal scale models of WWII vehicles and artillery. Some of these toys weight 160 Kilograms, definitely not your ordinary toys. You can check the size comparison in the pictures of this post. Besides, the manufacturer even threw in a bunch of electric motors to make the whole thing move, traverse its turrets and even smoke, light and sound effects.
Of course, stuff this fancy is not cheap by any means, starting at around one thousand pounds for a bare tank (no fancy effects or anything), nobody is going to give this to their 5 year-old nephew. Rather, these are toys for young adults such as myself (as soon as I get paid well enough to afford these babies), which are probably the best target audience for fancy (and I mean really fancy) toys. I for one, am definitely queuing this one up for after my prospective sword collection.
Last week I noticed very conspicuous posters in the London tube about a British / Brazilian cultural jam event, and to my amazement, a musician which I had heard as a sort of joke some time ago is coming to the UK to participate in such event. This guy's name is Tony da Gatorra. In a nutshell, this is an electronic repairman turned musician that created his own music instrument. This of course, is sort of an overstatement, since this instrument is merely a frankenstein made out of a synthesizer and an electronic drum in the shape of a guitar (of sorts). The interesting thing about this all is that this guy, up until a couple of years ago, was virtually unknown outside the city of Esteio (and not Estejo, as the site of this event says, what an amateurish editing...), and the guy is not very in touch with the outside world, since his blog is not even written by himself directly, but rather, through snail mail letters transcribed by a bunch of fans (which are probably the ones responsible for him to be sent to the UK) into the site. The posts in the blog are of an extremely low standard of portuguese, with mistakes that not even a school kid would make. Still, I am curious as to what may happen with this guy this side of the Atlantic.
In another part of my exploration of the English culture, I decided to attend a Cricket match at The Oval, of course, I was not accompanied by any Englishman, but rather by a couple of Japanese friends of mine, Yo and Mokoto. According to them, they attend cricket because that is the closest they can get to Baseball in British soil. Anyway, regardless of what you may have heard about Cricket being a pacific game, at least in my first trip to one such match I have seen a lot of yobbish behavior, even at some point involving the police. Of course, everybody around me swore they were shocked by the behavior of some, perhaps I jinxed that game, since the home side of Surrey also lost the match.
The Land of Silver, it seems, has to make do with silver. After being touted as the favorite to win Copa América, Argentina lost the final by a whooping 3 - 0 against Brazil. To be truly honest, I was expecting the Argentinians to win, since they wanted this title really bad, as they have not won anything for more than ten years. Even being guilty of underestimating my fellow Gaúcho coach Dunga the young and not incredibly famous players of this team, I am mighty proud of them. And it just proves the point that the Brazilian National Team is much better off without those money craving $tars. At least the Argentinians managed to be humble on defeat, since they are not used to being that way when they think they are going to win, as one can see by the headline in the Clarín. Hail the mighty Robinho!
And here for the highlights, it is in Turkish, but I quite like the way their goal celebrations sound:
Despite my lack of originality in this post (since I got the link from FHM), I just could not help myself from posting this video here. For those who know it, the video resembles MTV's Hermes and Renato in everything but the usage of proper English, originators of the band Massacration, which essentially consists of a troupe of comedians wearing blatantly fake wigs and hamming fake situations. This particular video is some sort of PSA warning of the dangers of having swords at home. This video was shown originally at Channel 101, which is a monthly short film festival. Though features in this festival are very low budget, some famous people have been involved in producing some of the films featured there, such as Jack Black and Drew Carey.
It is good to read positive things from Brazil for a change, instead of reading about urban battles in Rio, or the populist promises of our pseudo-socialist president (bear in mind that I think this is a good thing), today I saw an article on the BBC telling how they are thinking of adopting a city management strategy developed in my home town of Porto Alegre. One may call me somewhat nationalistic, or just easily excitable about my birthplace, and it is rather true. And I think that since it is not everyday that you can read about a more developed part of the country, I like to contrast it with the vision that Brazil is the place of constant partying, carnival and half-naked girls (though I wish that part was true). We have been accused of being overly overly protective about the country's reputation before, but hell, one can be accused of worse things.
Last week I got this link from a friend of mine with the simple message "My Consumer Dream", and to my surprise, it turned out to have become my consumer dream as well, even if I was never too keen of Arcade games in my youth. The reason, I was much more into the comfort of playing console games at home. The object of the dream, a custom-made arcade machine running a suite of emulation software, allowing it to play thousands of arcade and console titles. Of course, after I became adept at my bachelor lifestyle, it became clear to me that this sort of machine is not supposed to be played on your own, but rather, be the centerpiece of your social space at home, where you can invite other like-minded buddies to endless matches of Street Fighter II and Soul Edge. The price tag is by no means cheap, around $1500, and can certainly be diminished by locally sourcing the cabinet and other non-technological parts; and certainly beyond my current budget as a graduate student, so this baby will have to wait for me to get a tech job. Meanwhile, I will put some strain into the marriages of my recently espoused friends.
While reading the book Automated Planning: Theory and Practice, I found out that planning systems have been used in Roterdam to coordinate the loading of containers in container ships, I came across a neat picture of a freighter called, and I kid you not, Ever Uranus! Now, that is really something to be included in an AI book. Out of tens of Ever Something ships in the same company, someone got to choose Ever Uranus...
Following my lunchtime relaxation session, I found this amazing episode of Futurama in which our heroes are stranded in a planet full of Amazons, and they are condemned to die by snu snu, which is an euphemism for sex. However, as it would be predictable, they are not as shocked by the prospect of dying through having too much sex. Well, I know I would not be, but they sort of regret the decision. Wimps! This first video is strangely funnier when dubbed to German...
Though this post is amazingly more funny for those who understand the language of Camões, just the imagery and the sweet music on the background should provide some laughs. You can see that Francisco, the owner of the dick shop, is always on the verge of bursting into laughter, and his wife, also the butt of dick jokes cannot contain her giggles. The reporter starts with:
This is the workshop of Mr. Francisco, with the hands of his family, there comes 300 pricks, ready to give joy to any home in need.
Many jokes follow, such as the reporter asking, what is the biggest prick you held in your hands?. Upon which, the shop owner stutters and says "I even choke with the size". Well, you get the picture...
As part of my daily lunch talks with my colleagues at the university, we wondered how it would work to travel the world in a container ship, or any other freighter, for that matter. So it turns out that up until the 80s, some people did offer themselves as a amateur sailors for a free trip to any major port around the world.
Nowadays, it turns out that many companies have specialized in offering travel on board cargo ships, such as Freighter Travel in New Zealand, or the similarly named Canadian company. Other companies include Freighter World, or the one whose name I liked the most, The Cruise People. Since some of these ships dock at Rio Grande, it may even be feasible for me to go home in Porto Alegre. That should be quite an adventure!
As expected, Bethesda released a teaser trailer for the future Fallout 3, with the actual game release scheduled for the fall of 2008. Also as expected, the video says absolutely nothing regarding the playing mode of this future version of the classic. Opinions in the web vary, but it seems to me that Bethesda will go ahead and do what many have feared, which is an Oblivion with (futuristic) guns. An indication of this is that, contrary to what the Marketing guy has stated a few months ago, the game will be ported to the Playstation 3 and the XBox 360, therefore, any other statement by this guy is worth more or less the same as a Zimbabwean dollar.
To complete this post, I linked a video of what Black Isle StudiosFallout 3 would have been, an isometric view (though 3D this time), allowing turn-based combat as well as real-time, following the formula from the previous games. Most specialized online magazines with a tradition of being sellouts, as well as fans of Oblivion, say that the classic Fallout formula is something old (soooo 90s). Such statements were also made regarding Castlevania, however, experience tells us that certain games are more appropriately played in certain formats, and that is something independent of available technology, since the versions of Castlevania in 3D that were released for the Nintendo 64 were a failure. As a final aside, for those interested in checking it out, it is possible to download an unofficial tech demo of the defunct Van Buren Fallout, and contrast it with whatever comes out from Bethesda.
Indeed, one can find all sorts of things in London, and this week I have found one of those things that I must check out, the Handlebar Club. This is a club for gentlemen with a hirsute appendage of the upper lip, with graspable extremities. Beards are out. Members meet at a pub in London to socialize and compete in various categories (the criteria for winning, though, are beyond me). Besides the club, it seems like there is an event called the Beard and Mustache Championship, which seems to take an international scope. Quite interesting stuff, I was even considering joining the competition, but I am afraid I have no chance against professional beardsmen.
Last night I have come to a weird realization about blonde women in television and that is that they seem to have a remarkable tendency for being killers, and in the examples I cite, even serial killers. As my geekiness may imply, I am a fan of science fiction cinematography and television, and hence, my examples all stem from this type of source. My first example, for those who are familiar with Battlestar Galactica, is Number Six (the lady on the left), a cybernetic femme fatale responsible for the near annihilation of the human race. The other one, from the more recent Heroes series is Niki/Jessica, a split personality type, which rips men's hearts apart (quite literally). Given this amount of reinforcement learning from these examples, I am more than happy with the more harmless brunettes, and give a word of advice to my fellows, if you happen to have the opportunity of a casual encounter with one such type, watch your back!
A quite interesting link from my friend Jigar, about a series of videos showing how to make interesting experiments at home using ordinary materials. However, some of the experiments are not quite easy to reproduce, especially the ones that involve drilling wood, since not everybody has the tools to do this. In any case, the paper jet engine looks like an awesome thing to do at a bar, though blowing in the hole as Mr. G. says is not as easy as it looks.
Call me a patriotic sucker, but I always find it nice to see people from Brazil doing noteworthy stuff, but it really gave me a hint of pride to see one of the latest episodes of Mythbusters featuring an M5 employee from Brazil proudly showing off the national football teamt-shirt. Also on the Mythbusters line, I found it hilarious for them to make a webcast contribution to the Ask a Ninja site.
I know I am repeating myself here, however, since I have watched this documentary again last weekend, and Youtube has removed the video I liked in my previous post, I am posting what I believe to be the funniest version of the Aristocrats joke. Enjoy.
While wasting away my lunch time, I came across the website of a documentary called, quite appropriately Fuck, directed by Steve Anderson. According to the summary, this documentary discusses the history of the word, as well as freedom of speech. It got me really interested, and I will definitely try and get it somehow.
It has been almost a month since I have been to Spain and took this picture, but only now I have been able to find the time to edit the image and enhance the text in the detail. Now, is it not nice to see how the locals enjoy the presence of tourists, especially in highly frequented tourist destinations such as Barcelona. In this particular instance, a person who happens to live right in front of the view to Barcelona from Park Güell, for instance, has expressed its delight with tourists by painting this lovely message in its walls facing the park. If the image quality is too poor to figure out the whole message, it says:
Why call it tourist season if we can't shoot then?
I just returned from a show of the Blue Man Group, which just happens to be in a theater right across the street where I work. I went into it with very low expectations, since I am not the type of person usually connected to the arts, however I left positively impressed. The show is quite unusual, and the interactivity is just hilarious. I will definitely try and watch it again.
The video in this post reminds me of the golden age of isometric games, such as X-COM, Ultima VII, Populous, and the list goes on. The music is called Remind Me, from the Norwegian duo Röyksopp, whose musical style is very adequately called Electronic Chill Out. This video won the 2002 best video award from MTV Europe, which is pretty snazzy. Now I am going to see if I download some of those games from an abandonware website.
This might be an unusual title, but it is logically correct. Here is the deal, researchers have found a mineral with the same composition of Kryptonite in Serbia. So if you follow my logic, the place in which Kryptonite can be found, should also be the place where Superman's rocket from Krypton has landed. Having landed in Serbia, it makes sense that Superman might have been raised in Serbia, Clarko Kentovic, how about that?
Since I am already losing valuable research time for my lunch break, I figured I should post a couple more pictures from my latest expedition to Barça. This one is from the famous Park Güell, in which some of the nicest creations of Antoni Gaudí are located. The mosaics and the shapes featured in the monuments here are quite beautiful, like the sun in the figure below.
Funny stuff, Maradona dreaming of being in the Brazilian national team because he has been drinking too much Guaraná. Too bad some Argentinians did not get the joke and started the bashing in the comments, they obviously have never tasted the drink, it is really awesome.
This picture is from a street in Tarragona, Spain, where I have spent my pre-easter weekend with very good company. Now the funny bit, for those who speak Portuguese, the street name means something along the lines of Saint Cock.
Once again, I understand how cheesy it is to post song lyrics on a blog. Yet, I do not give a flying f*ck for being cheesy, so, the song I have been playing repetitively these days (and probably being shown multiple times in the lower right of this page) is Pearl Jam's Light Years, the lyrics being very descriptive of my current state of spirit. Long distance relationships are really a burden, but what should one do with meaningful relationships?
I've used hammers made out of wood I have played games with pieces and rules.. I've deciphered tricks at the bar... But now you're gone,... I haven't figured out why... I've come up with riddles... and jokes about war... I've figured out numbers and what they're for... I've understood feelings.. and I've understood words... But how could you be taken away?...
And wherever you've gone...and wherever we might go... It don't seem fair...today just disappeared... Your light's reflected now,... reflected from afar... We were but stones,... your light made us stars
With heavy breath,... awakened regrets... Back pages and days alone that could have been spent, Together... but we were... miles apar...t Every inch between us becomes light years now... No need to be void,... or save up on life... You got to spend it all.....
And wherever you've gone... and wherever we might go... It don't seem fair...you seemed to like it here... Your light's reflected now,... reflected from afar We were but stones,... your light made us stars
And wherever you've gone... and wherever we might go... It don't seem fair...today just disappeared... Your light's reflected now,... reflected from afar... We were but stones,... your light made us stars
Now, thanks to the Friday morning post from the British FHM, I plagiarize to whoever reads this blog an amazingly revealing video about what (some) men really think when they reply to cornering questions. Now, what I like the best about this video is the mellow soundtrack in the background, and the screeching record on the reality switch is just hilarious!
This morning I checked out an amazingly funny link sent to me by my friend Marcelo showing a spoof of the Cthulhu fictional horror creature, which consists of mixing the Cthulhu mythos with the world of Hello Kitty. This spoof is named, appropriately enough Hello Cthulhu, and is featured in a web comic strip called The Misadventures of Hello Cthulhu. I leave to you a sample of that comic strip.
Now for a slight update, my friend Paulo just brought to my attention this series of toys called My Little Cthulhu, which include cute little representations of the aforementioned creatures, including miniature victims, just so you can play Cthulhu by yourself at home.
Lately I have been enticed by the teasers from HBO's new season of Rome, which is an unfortunate thing to be when you live outside America, where this season has already premièred, as opposed to Britain, which has yet to see it. If you are not willing to find the episodes on the Internet, that is. And even though I am a little late in the month to mention it, what caused me to take a look at HBO's website for the new series was the Ides of March, the date in which Caesar was assassinated. Of course a direct conversion of this date to the modern Gregorian calendar is quite hard to do, given the way people kept track of dates in the ancient Roman Calendar was quite ad hoc, so I guess I would have some leeway to mention this date now.
This post has been on my queue for some time, and it details a pseudo-institution of my home state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil; I am of course referring to Achubergs (they even have a website under construction). For those who do not understand Portuguese (which essentially means the vast majority of the web users), this is an acronym for the Association of the Pussy Lickers from Rio Grande do Sul, now that's rude! Or maybe not, since the target audience of this "speciality" might find this quite an interesting trait in recreational activities. In any case, I for one, am keen on seeing this site being completed.
While taking a look at Despair Inc, I came across this surreal contraption created in America called the Transaurus. Now that's a remarkably American thing, I must say. A fire-spewing mechanical dinosaur, which they use from demolition jobs to drug incineration.
One of the many architectural marvels of Barcelona is the church of the Sagrada Família, which is an enormous stone church in Gaudí's unique (and mind you, weird) style. It is still under construction though, and given its proportions, it will continue to be under construction for quite a long time. When (and if) it is finished, it will be the largest cathedral in Europe.
This nasty looking black goo oozing out of my mouth is a Catalonian delicacy called Black Rice (Arroz Negro). Fortunately, I was only informed of how it is made after I had eaten it, as it includes an entire squid, as well as, and you probably guessed right, its ink sac, and thus ink.
